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Juan Gabriel Vasquezbooks include the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin award winner and national bestseller, The Sound of Things Falling, as well as the award-winning The Informers and The Secret History of Costaguana.

Pakistan on the Brink

The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan

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Overview

The leading journalist on Pakistan lays out America’s options with Pakistan and Afghanistan in the post-Bin Laden years.

What are the possibilities-and hazards-facing America as it withdraws from Afghanistan and as it reviews its long engagement in Pakistan? Where is the Taliban now in both these countries? What does the immediate future hold and what are America’s choices as President Obama considers our complicated history and faces reelection?

These are some of the crucial questions that Ahmed Rashid- Pakistan’s preeminent journalist-takes on in this follow-up to his acclaimed Descent into Chaos. Rashid correctly predicted that the Iraq war would have to be refocused into Afghanistan and that Pakistan would emerge as the leading player through which American interests and actions would have to be directed. Now, as Washington and the rest of the West wrestle with negotiating with unreliable and unstable "allies" in Pakistan, there is no better guide to the dark future than Ahmed Rashid.

He focuses on the long-term problems-the changing casts of characters, the future of international terrorism, and the actual policies and strategies both within Pakistan and Afghanistan and among the Western allies-as the world tries to bring some stability to a fractured region saddled with a legacy of violence and corruption. The decisions made by America and the West will affect the security and safety of the world. And as he has done so well in the past, Rashid offers sensible solutions and provides a way forward for all three countries.

"Pakistan on the Brink is a page turner. Through Ahmed Rashid’s eloquent, incisive, objective, and fact-based descriptions of events and blunders repeatedly committed by the Afghan, Pakistani, and American establishments, the reader gets a great understanding of the genesis of the quagmire for which President Obama has coined the phrase AfPak." — Louisville Courier-Journal

Praise for Descent into Chaos

"Powerful." — Wolf Blitzer

"A clear-headed, sobering look at a country whose ties with the U.S. are becoming ever more frayed." — Publishers Weekly

“Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, is that most valuable of political analysts: both insider and outsider to the problems he studies. His book should be read by anyone pondering how America might stop widening Osama bin Laden’s pool of bomb-clad volunteers.” — Chicago Tribune

“Rashid’s book should be required reading for both presidential candidates, and anyone who wants to understand the jihadi problem.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Ahmed Rashid’s latest work provides essential insights for anyone who hopes to understand what’s going on in Central Asia and the alternative futures that stretch out before it." — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A clear-headed, sobering look at a country whose ties with the U.S. are becoming ever more frayed." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Excellent…Nobody tells the story of Musharaff’s duplicity better than Rashid.” — Time

“Ahmed Rashid has over the decades turned out to be something of a prophet in the region…[and] his fourth book [is] a caustic compendium of the mistakes by the Bush administration and, by extension, its regional allies, in tackling Islamic militancy.” — International Herald Tribune